Why Ham Radio is that conservative? Warum nur so konservativ?

It’s only in late 2015 that the first SDR transceiver of one of the big japanese players hit the market. Until then, there never had been even a receiver of this kind from these sources.

Technological progress seems to come from the edges, from Russia, Italy, Switzerland, and the U.S. For many decades, hams do have their difficulties in accepting new technologies and techniques – may that be the use of SSB, CW as a mandatory, the PC or advanced digimodes.

The majority of them remains stunningly conservative. And their media lives a role model which they simply follow.

The advent of the IC-7300 reminded me of a paper, written originally in German, already in 2007. There I tried to explore this attitude. It also tracks the way of professional technology, of which ham radio technology increasingly slower lagging behind it.

Adam Farson (VA7OJ/AB4OJ) did a great job to vividly translate the text into English, read it here.